World War II caused more than 40 million people to become refugees in Europe alone. The first signs of refugees began to appear in 1938 when Germany annexed Austria and it had become clear that the Jews who lived in Austria would need to find new homes. To deal with this situation the Evian conference was convened, 32 nations attended. When the conference ended an intergovernmental refugee committee was established. The second wave of refugees started to appear in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. The Germans expelled 2 million Polish people from their homeland, and out of these 2 million some were deported to Germany to work as slave laborers. However, the most well known refugees of World War II are the Jewish people “By September 1939, approximately 282,000 Jews left Germany and 117,000 from annexed Austria. Of these, some 95,000 emigrated to the United States, 60,000 to Palestine, 40,000 to Great Britain, and about 75,000 to Central and South America, with the largest numbers entering Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia. More than 18,000 Jews from the German Reich were also able to find refuge in Shanghai, in Japanese-occupied China. By October 1941, when Jewish emigration was officially forbidden, the number of Jews in Germany had declined to 163,000.” The vast majority of those Jews still in Germany were murdered in Nazi camps and ghettos during the Holocaust. However, the Jewish people would not be the last refuges of World War II, near the end of the war thousands of Germans would flee Germany as it was invaded. Additionally, Germans who had settled in parts of Eastern Europe conquered by the Nazis would find themselves expelled. For example in “Czechoslovakia, more than 2 million were dumped over the country’s border. Then in Poland, Germans were rounded up before being removed by authorities. In Romania, around 400,000 Germans left their homes while Yugoslavia was virtually emptied of its 500,000-strong German community.”
A Belgian refugee brought to England.
German refugees fleeing Berlin after the end of the war.
Refugees who left their homes to escape the battle that was raging there.
Due to World War II much of the groundwork was set to establish organizations that still help refugees to this day, these organizations are United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, International Refugee Organization, and Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Additionally, there are laws which where established which aided refugees to this day such as, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva conventions – a series of four treaties (subsequently followed by three additional protocols) that set out in international law what is humanitarian conduct during armed conflict, including the treatment of civilians, and Convention relating to the Status of Refugees became the cornerstone of international law on refugees.
Polish refugees hoping to be picked up by a train bound for England.
German refugees at the end of the war in Berlin.
German Jews seeking to leave Germany after the Nazis came into power.
Refugees & War 